Under the mizzen mast: A voyage round the world

by Nehemiah Adams

RESUMING THE MINISTRY, AT SEA.

Dec. 19. Had services in the evening at seven by day light. It was the anniversary of my first sermon as Colleague pastor of the First Church at Cambridge, forty years ago. It was my first attempt to preach since February 14th. On account of uneasy motion in the vessel, sat and conducted the exercises. Did not feel the least inconvenience from the effort but slept quietly all night.

II.
CAPE HORN.

All places that the eye of Heaven visits

Are to a wise man ports and happy havens.

Teach thy necessity to reason thus:

There is no virtue like necessity.

Shakspeare: Richard II.

At six o’clock, A. M., Dec. 20, a man at the mast-head cried, “Land, ho!” We saw the highlands of Tierra del Fuego, about a hundred miles from Cape Horn. We lay on the water motionless. About a mile from us was a brig apparently bound the same way. The captain ordered a boat to be made ready; and the mate, one of the boatswains, and three sailors, rowed to her. She proved to be the brig “Hazard,” Capt. Lewis, of Boston, belonging to Messrs. Baker and Morrill, eighty days from Malaga, bound to San Francisco, with raisins and lemons. The visitors received much information, and gave papers,—which, though fifty-seven days old, were gladly received,—some buckwheat, and other things; and received kind tokens in return. The swell would often hide the boat from the ship and the ship from the boat, except the upper sails. In the afternoon the wind sprung up fair; soon we came close to, and the captains had conversation.

Tierra del Fuego lies south of Patagonia, separated by the Straits of Magellan. It has high hills, which, at a distance, look like domes. Many bays indent the coast, causing it to bend frequently. Between this district of country and Staten Land or Island, are the Straits of Le Maire, twelve miles broad. Entering the Straits with a fair wind and a strong current, on the morning of a bright, cool day, Dec. 21, we went at the rate of thirteen knots. We came alongside of a great patch of seaweed and kelp on which were eleven large birds. We had tacked or had been becalmed for almost a week, losing nearly five days. We therefore enjoyed our speed the more. The hills were picturesque in the variety of their shapes; their jaggedness and grouping were beyond imagination. One cluster was surmounted by an enormous stone, fluted like a sea-shell, looking as if it were placed there for a memorial purpose. There was another hill which terminated in the appearance of a man’s head, the face upward, the features regular, and so much resembling one of the sailors that it received his name. Flocks of wild ducks, twenty or thirty in each, albatrosses, cape hens, cape pigeons, penguins or divers, were abundant. These penguins float with only the head above water, and dive often; they all made the scene most lively. We sat or stood three or four hours enjoying the wild enchantment. It was worth to any one a voyage from New York. We saw no trace of an inhabitant. They are said to be of large stature, almost naked, their skin and flesh toughened by the climate. They do no tillage, but live on shell-fish and game. I shall always remember this region for its wild beauty and seemingly intense barrenness.

We came up with a New-Bedford whaler; the name “Selah” was on her quarter, whaleboats over her side, and men at the mast-head, looking for whales or seals. We also descried a large ship ahead of us which we overtook. She proved to be the “Cambrian,” Liverpool, seventy days out. We enjoyed the sight of her, an iron vessel, with wire rigging, neat and handsome.

CAPE HORN. [Page 84].

At length we saw Cape Horn Island, the object of our desire, and at 7, P. M., were abreast of it. Some high rocks stood about like sentinels. We were within a mile of the Cape.

Cape Horn Island is the southernmost extremity of Tierra del Fuego, in south latitude 55° 58´. It is the southern termination of a group of rocky islands surmounted with a dome-like hill, out of which is a projection like a straight horn. But Schouten, the Dutch discoverer, is said to have named Cape Horn from Hoorn, in the Netherlands, his native place. The whole hill is a bare rock; indeed, how could anything, even the lowest forms of vegetable life, find root on a place smitten as this is by the waves? Only the lichens, stealing with seeming compassion over every form in nature doomed to barrenness, succeed in holding on to these rocks. The hill is about eight hundred feet high, its base environed by low, black rocks, with not a sign even of marine vegetation. One line of these rocks looks like a fort, the seeming gateway, higher than the rest of the wall, being composed of perpendicular fragments. All along the base of the rough hill, low, irregular piles, like a growth of thorns and brambles around a bowlder in a field, constitute a fringe, as though Nature felt that the place needed some appropriate decoration; and what could be more so than that which she has here given? For a long space toward the termination of the Cape, sharp rocks stand up in groups, and some apart, making a gradual ending of the scene, all in agreement with the wildness which marks the region.

The sight of this spot, one landmark of our continent, can never fade from the memory of the beholder. Like many a distinguished object it is of moderate size, its impressiveness being due not to its bulk or height, but to its position. At first you are disappointed in not seeing at such a place something colossal; you would have it mountainous; at least, you would have thought that it would be columnar. Nothing of this; you have the disappointment which you feel on seeing for the first time a distinguished man, whom you find to be of low stature, whereas you would have had him of imposing appearance. But soon, however, you feel that you are at one of the ends of the earth. Here the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans begin, the great deep dividing itself into those two principal features of our globe. Anything monumental, any thing statuesque, or even picturesque, here, you feel would be trifling. Like silence, more expressive at times than speech, the total absence of all display here is sublimity itself; you would not have it otherwise than an infinite solitude, unpretentious, without form, almost chaotic. Around this point it is as though there were a contest to which ocean each billow shall divide; here the winds and waters make incessant war; the sea always roars and the fulness thereof. The rocks which finally terminate the Cape stand apart, as you sometimes see corners of blocks of buildings where an extensive fire has raged and the most of the walls have fallen in; but here and there a shoulder of a wall overhangs the ruins.

We stood together as we passed the last landmarks, and sang,

“Praise God, from whom all blessings flow.”

It had been a day from beginning to end of constant pleasure, from the moment that we entered the Straits of Le Maire. We had accomplished one great design in our voyage. Would that the pleasant theory that musical sounds leave their vibration in the air might have reality given to it, and praise to God break forth from all of every language who navigate the Cape!

We had reason to feel that we were not a great way from circumpolar regions; for at a quarter before eleven, the night previous, there were lingering streaks of pink light in the west. We never before read out of doors so late in the evening as we did that 21st of December on deck.

We had been steering south, going five degrees below the Cape; then we needed to turn and go northward; but the fierce winds made no account of our plan. You may be several weeks trying in vain, as a ship belonging to our firm was, to double the Cape; but by favoring winds, we were only six days. Once only during this time had we a full view of the Horn; our captain had been here six times, and now for the second time only saw the Cape. Nothing lay between us and the Antarctic Circle and the South Pole. The waves were Cape-Horn swells, peculiar to that region. The sight of the ocean there was wild beyond description. Now and then the sun would come out, but his smile seemed sarcastic. Going on deck to view the tempest you are made to feel, as the ship goes down into deep places, that you would be more surprised at her coming up than if she should disappear. It is a good time and place for faith. One of the Latin fathers said, “Qui discat orare, discat navigare;” Let him who would learn to pray go to sea. It is to be doubted whether there are many places on the globe where one feels the power of solitude precisely as here. In the depth of a wilderness, or among mountains, solitude is more like death; but here it seems to have consciousness; you are spell-bound by some awful power; there is an infinitude about these watery realms; it seems like being in eternity. In the ascent of Mont Blanc, while gazing from the Mer de Glace on those needles of granite, inaccessible except to the eagle, I once felt that nothing could exceed the sense of desolateness there inspired; but to be at the end of a continent, with two oceans separating and forming a wild race-way where they go asunder, all the winds and storms being summoned to witness the inauguration of two oceans, their frantic uproar seemingly designed for the great occasion, Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego with their stupendous solitudes listening to the clamor; and then the feeling that the next place recorded on the map is the Antarctic Circle, with its barriers of cold and ice, you are warranted in the conviction that you are as near the confines of unearthly dimensions as you can be on this planet. You think of home, and the thought of your separation from friends and country and your consignment to these awful wilds, gives you a feeling of littleness, of nothingness, seldom if ever experienced elsewhere. And here is the proud ship that stretched her length in the pier at New York so far as to hold her spar over the passing drays, reaching almost to the opposite ware-rooms, now less than an egg-shell in these waters,—a tiny nautilus, a bubble, whose destruction any moment, unseen by any human eye, could not detain any of these proud waters to be so much as a mound over her grave.

One day, before we entered the Straits and reached Cape Horn, along the neighborhood of Patagonia, the sea was more than usually disturbed, a ground-swell succeeding a gale lifting the waves higher than we had seen them, so that the motion of the ship had no uniformity for any two consecutive moments during the larger part of the day,—a cold, cheerless day, the sun now and then shining faintly, the wind ahead, no chance for a nautical observation, everything to the last degree forlorn. A bird came in all this turmoil and lighted in the water near the ship, and swam about us. The sight suggested the following lines:—

THE CAPE-HORN ALBATROSS.

The ship lay tossing on the stormy ocean,

A head wind challenging her right of way;

Sail after sail she furled; in exultation

The waves accounted her their yielding prey.

On her lee beam the Patagonia coast line

Keeps ambushed reefs to snare the drifting keel;

We fancied breakers in the dying sunshine,

And questioned what the daybreak would reveal.

No cities, towns, nor quiet rural village

Gladden the heart along this lonely way;

But cannibals may lurk with death and pillage

For all whom winds and currents force astray.

The Falkland Isles, Tierra del Fuego,

Straits of Le Maire, the near Antarctic Zone,

The stormy Horn, whose rocks the tempest echo,

Can faith and courage there maintain their throne?

Watching the swell from out the cabin windows,

The towering waves piled high and steep appear;

But what is riding on those mighty billows?

An albatross. The sight allays my fear.

Her snow-white breast she settles on the water,

Her dark wings fluttering while she trims her form,

Then calmly rides; nor can the great waves daunt her,

Nor will she heed the menace of the storm.

She spreads her wings, flies low across the vessel,

She scans the wake, then sails around the bows,

Not moving either pinion; much I marvel

How like one flying in a dream she goes.

She craves the presence of no other sea-bird;

She revels in the power to go at will;

The ocean solitudes, the wandering seaward,

The distant sail, her daring spirit thrill.

Behold, this fowl hath neither barn nor storehouse;

An unseen Hand assists her search for food;

Storms bring her up deep things of ocean’s produce,

Prized the more highly in the storm pursued.

With joy each day I’ll take the wings of morning,

Dwell in the utmost parts of this lone sea;

E’en there thy hand shall lead me, still adoring,

And thy right hand shall hold who trust in Thee.